Chapter Text
He wakes up every morning to a sky he recognizes in a world he doesn’t, and the disconnect itches like an old wound.
He hides away in the basement when he can, but the excitement and pure, uncomplicated affection of two small children pulls him from his work again and again.
Dipper and Mabel are the best thing that’s happened to him in the past thirty years, maybe his entire life, and they more than make up for the distant pain of living in a world that moved on without him.
(When it gets to be too much, when even Dipper’s eager questions and Mabel’s bright happiness can’t stop the cacophony in his mind, he sits on the roof and names the stars, long-disused memory coming to the forefront, until his head is full of Latin and Greek and old sailor legends and he can breathe again).
The old world dies before he’s even gotten used to it, and he wakes up again to a completely new one.
Bill is gone. Stan was gone too, but he’s coming back, he’s going to be okay.
Ford is safe. He has a family. He probably doesn’t deserve them, but they seem to care about him anyway, so all he can do is care for them back as much as he possibly can.
The kids join him on the roof one night before they leave. Mabel sits on his lap and points up at the sky, saying things like “those stars look like Waddles!” Dipper is kneeling at his side, a crinkled Guide to Constellations clutched in his hands, and he’s trying to find the correct names for constellations as fast as Mabel mislabels them. He’s losing, badly.
Ford just sits quietly, listening to their good-natured bickering and wondering what he did in his life to earn this.
When they quiet down, he starts to talk.
He tells them about Ursa Major, about Cassiopeia, about Scorpio and Sagittarius. He smiles and tells them about the Big Dipper, and the stories behind them all.
He tells them about cold New Jersey nights on a rooftop far away from this one, sitting with his brother and pointing out these same constellations a lifetime ago.
Mabel eventually falls asleep, lulled by the quiet of the night. Ford holds her carefully, and thinks about picking her up and shaking a drowsy Dipper awake to put them to bed. He doesn’t.
Stan comes up at some point, looking for them. He settles beside them, leaving Dipper slumped against Ford’s side, and bumps Ford with his shoulder.
“Tellin’ them your nerd star stories?” he asks.
“I was, yes. I forgot how bright they are out here.”
Stan is looking at Mabel with a fond little smile, but then he looks up at Ford. His expression doesn’t change.
“You mind doing an encore?”
Somehow, incredibly, something settles in Ford at that. It’s like a weight he’s been carrying for forty-odd years has just… vanished.
It’s like two kids sitting on a New Jersey rooftop finally going free.
He smiles.
“Not at all."